Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguisticCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic
Croce, Benedetto
Aesthetics; Language and languages -- Philosophy; Philosophy
From this it follows that intellectualistic scepticism finds it easy
to deny the certainty of any history, for the certainty of history
differs from that of science. It is the certainty of memory and
of authority, not that of analysis and demonstration. To speak of
historical induction or demonstration is to make a metaphorical use of
these expressions, which bear a quite different meaning in history to
that which they bear in science. The conviction of the historian is the
undemonstrable conviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses,
listened attentively to the case, and prayed Heaven to inspire him.
Sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a
negligible minority compared with the occasions when he grasps the
truth. That is why good sense is right against the intellectualists in
believing in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon," but what the
individual and humanity remember of their past. We strive to enlarge
and to render as precise as possible this record, which in some places
is dim, in others very clear. We cannot do without it, such as it is,
and taken as a whole it is rich in truth. Only in a spirit of paradox
can one doubt that there ever was a Greece or a Rome, an Alexander or a
Cæsar, a feudal Europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that on
the 1st of November 1517 the theses of Luther were fixed to the door of
the church at Wittemberg, or that the Bastile was taken by the people
of Paris on the 14th of July 1789.
"What proof hast thou of all this?" asks the sophist, ironically.
Humanity replies: "I remember it."
[Sidenote: _Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural
sciences, and their limits._]
The world of what has happened, of the concrete, of historical fact,
is the world called real, natural, including in this definition both
the reality called physical and that called spiritual and human. All
this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be shown as it
realistically is; imaginary or artistic intuition in the narrow sense,
if presented in the aspect of the possible, that is to say, of the
imaginable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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